President John F. Kennedy: "America's most prized ambassador of good will throughout the world."

Film historian Leonard Maltin: "There is a tendency to take Bob Hope for granted . . . What nonsense! Hope's films succeeded because they were good and because he adapted so well to the film medium."

Bing Crosby: "Applause, laughter and commendation are food and drink for him. There's no tension felt when he walks onstage - not by him, anyhow. He expands, he mellows, he blooms, he beams. When he tells his first gag and the place falls apart, his life is complete."

Charlie Chaplin: "One of the best timers of comedy I've ever seen."

Woody Allen: "It's not for nothing that he's such a greatly accepted comedian."

Nobel Prize-winning author John Steinbeck: "This man drives himself and is driven. It is impossible to see how he can do so much, can cover so much ground, can work so hard and be so effective. There's a man. There is really a man."

Johnny Carson: "I think the greatest thing that a performer can have if he is going to be successful is an empathy with the audience. They have to like him . . . Bob Hope can walk out on stage and people are laughing before he gets there."

Golf great Arnold Palmer: "Bob's a gentle, generous man who loves people and loves what he does."

Angie Dickinson: "He's funny, graceful and sexy. Cool is always sexy, and he's Mister Cool. And he's got that look in his eyes. Just notice the way he walks, with dazzling grace - he's fawnlike. You enjoy him as much as the jokes. I don't think of him as a comic; I just think of him as a very funny man."